


Five Times Din Doesn't Wear The Helmet (and one time he does)

by beautifulbb8 (nerdqueenenterprise)



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Gen, Trans Din Djarin, just absolute truck loads of dad feels and din being soft exactly how beskar isn't, one (1) mention of needles in the last scene tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:27:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23260951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdqueenenterprise/pseuds/beautifulbb8
Summary: Din is becoming abuir. It's... a learning process.
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 252





	Five Times Din Doesn't Wear The Helmet (and one time he does)

**Author's Note:**

> hello everyone i have watched the mandalorian twice times since last thursday (it is right now sunday). i am entirely filled with emotions now and therefore i made this. enjoy!

Din was used to quietness. Loneliness. And for the most part, the child occupied itself, sat staring at the blinking lights in the cockpit, sucking on whatever piece of scrap it favoured this week, or, more often than not, slept.

After the first few weeks he’s gotten used to the crushing fear of failing this tiny child and equally used to this new aspect of his life, this change to his perpetual loneliness, he… well, he doesn’t forget the child is there, doesn’t forget to feed or wash or entertain it, let it scramble all over himself for its amusement, but the child burrowed into his life so easily that he almost forgets it’s there.

  
  
  
  


On long stretches of flight with nothing to occupy himself except for whatever dirt-cheap piece of entertainment he picked up wherever he stopped last, he doesn’t wear his armour. It’s a bit of a break from Mandalorian culture - no-one steps out of their quarters without armour - but as the  _ Razor Crest _ is quarters and workspace and vehicle all at once he figures he can allow himself this. Besides, the washing facilities are minimal and it’s quite impressive how quickly one starts to stink if stuck under two layers of cloth, one layer of leather and one layer of beskar.

The helmet takes far, far longer to come off around the child. To take off the helmet in front of a stranger is to break the Creed, and Din hasn’t officially taken the child as his foundling yet, hasn’t spoken the words, is still so very aware of the presence of another lifeform. When he was still alone, he used to take the helmet off more than occasionally. To eat, to drink, to sleep, to wash and sometimes just to watch the stars streaking by. But now, with the child, it feels indecent to expose himself like this. So he doesn’t.

  
  
  
  


When the child sleeps, he has time to eat properly, to savour the hints of flavour his rehydrated meal might have. The helmet sits just outside the periphery of his vision, a safe, comfortable distance while he presses a mouthful of mushed vanak against his palate and thinks about nothing in particular.

The ship is quiet. Stars rush by unheard, the engine barely hums, one of the lights buzzes. This is home as Din knows it. Quiet. Simplistic.

Metal bangs against metal. Loud. Disorienting. Din is up before he even knows it, hand on his blaster, scanning, grabbing for his helmet, hearing metal ringing against metal but unable to tell where the noise is coming from, eyes saccading over the room -

“Gwyah.”

The ringing of metal against metal stops.

Din carefully steps around the storage crate he uses as a table. His hand relaxes on his blaster, because he’s gotten used to sounds like these.

“Ywb.”

His helmet sits on its side, a little three-fingered green hand patting down the visor and leaving fingerprints, green ears wafting slightly in concentration.

“Hey,” Din says. Clears his throat, tries again. “Hey, that’s mine.”

The child turns around and blinks. There’s no recognition in its gaze, but then again, is there ever? What matters is that Din’s face is naked and he can feel it heating up, head feeling uncomfortably light and thin-skinned on his shoulders and part of him wants to hide.

A rather large part, actually.

He reaches for the helmet. “Give it back.”

The child coos again and reaches for him, a claw softly sliding over the stubble accumulated on his chin. Din flinches, suddenly exposed and scared and embarrassed. The child flinches too, its ears drooping. It’s still reaching out.

Din is suffocating. He needs his helmet back, badly, but can’t reach for it for fear of having his face touched again.

“Goo!” The child exclaims, ears perking up, and then it waddles forward to embrace Din’s knee.

He immediately snatches the helmet and puts it on again, the world vanishing, his ears pressed against his head like they should be.

His heartrate calms.

“You shouldn’t have seen that,” he tries explaining to the top of a bald green head. “I’m not your  _ buir _ , you can’t see my face -”

“Bwr.” Two black eyes blink up at him.

“ _ Buir _ .”

“Bwir.” The ears raise and the child giggles. “Bwir!”

Din feels stupid for getting scared so badly now. It is, after all, just a baby and therefore can’t know about the significance of having seen his face. Probably won’t remember it, either.

“I’m not your  _ buir _ .”

“Bwir.”

Din sighs but gives up.

  
  
  
  


He thinks about it when he’s trying to sleep that night. A clan of two, the armourer had said. You don’t question the armourer. And the child is a child. And Din is an adult. A foundling needs a  _ buir _ as much as a Mandalorian needs a helmet. The child is a foundling. Din is the only adult around.

He reaches out and touches his helmet sitting next to him, beskar cool under his fingers. Listens to the tiny snuffles of the child sleeping and wonders when he’ll be able to say the words to take it in that are burning in his throat. And when they started burning in the first place.

  
  
  
  


XXXXX

  
  
  
  


After the first time the helmet came off, the child seems to have grasped the difference between the helmet and Din. And that the helmet isn’t a person.

He lets himself have a brief water shower after a job on a particularly sandy planet, ever-mindful of the water meter but allowing himself a short minute of standing under the cool spray with his eyes closed and enjoying the sensation. Then he takes a half-step forward and reaches for the bar of soap, like you normally do when you’re really, really dirty.

Except his foot hits something (hard), then steps on something tiny. It squeaks

And then it wails.

The sound reverberates off the metal walls of the ‘fresher, scrapes around the inside of Din’s skull, making himself go half insane before he even manages to bend down and pick the child up.

It continues wailing.

“Hey, hey,” he tries, at once terrified and annoyed. Mostly terrified. He must’ve stepped on its tiny naked foot after kicking it over. “Hey, you’re not supposed to be in here. I’m sorry I kicked you.” It keeps wailing. Din carefully strokes its ears that are dripping with water, carefully shields its eyes from the shower and then, finally, presses it against his chest. “I’m sorry. Ni ceta. You shouldn’t have gotten in here.”

The wailing subsides, slowly. Din keeps stroking along the child’s naked back, gently keeping it pressed against him, its heartbeat fast and fluttery and so tiny against his skin.

“I’m sorry,” he says one last time. “How did you even get in here?”

“Bwir.”

Yes, yes, I’m sorry.”

The child looks up at him and squawks.

  
  
  
  


By the time he has the child outside and fully calm again, he’s run out of so much water that he can’t continue showering if he doesn’t want them to dehydrate on their way to the next planet. So he finishes his clean-up with wet wipes and a sonic and then plots a course to the nearest planet where he can fill up the water tank. He hadn’t meant to use so much water, but foolishly enough he’d let it run while he got the child settled.

  
  
  
  


The next time the child ends up in a shower with him is while he’s on a stakeout on a strange moon orbiting a gas giant. He rented a small, dingy room with a window that gives him a perfect view of the courtyard where his target should show up, but he’s also relatively sure that the target is still several days out, so instead he allows himself to relax, just a little. Take a water shower, shave until his skin is smooth as beskar, rub bacta lotion over today’s array of bruises.

The shower is in a little basin, edge raised just high enough to require him to really lift his feet when stepping over it, but it ensures that he becomes aware of the child because it falls into the basin with a splat, face first, ears comically flat against the ceramic surface. And then the wailing starts again.

A whole cycle of shushing the child and gently bouncing it up and down by some half-remembered instinct later, the child is settled and Din returns to his shower.

“Bwir!” Comes a little shriek, voice threatening on the edge of a wail.

When he turns around, the child is standing behind him, desperately straining with its arms upwards, the universal gesture for pick me up.

“Bwir!” It insists again.

“You can’t come into the shower with me.”

Contrary to what some people might think, Din knows who he is. He’s a bounty hunter, a murderer a hundred times over, a man who has submitted himself to the life of a lone soldier. He’s also nakedly staring down a green goblin baby that couldn’t reach his knee cap if it tried.

Only this green goblin baby that can’t reach his knee cap adopted him. Calls him  _ buir _ . Drives the hot shame at having his face uncovered away and turns it into a wonderful warmth in his stomach. And drives him pretty kriffing insane on occasion.

Especially when he has to find something to occupy it.

“Come here, little womp rat.” He lifts the child by its clothes first before remembering his manners. His helmet is still piled up with the rest of his armour, all in need of a good, proper cleaning session. He tips the helmet onto its side with one hand, then sets the child down inside of it.

It is immediately fascinated. “Goo. Uuh.”

“Yeah. Just don’t lick it.”

The tiny pink tongue disappears again immediately, but there’s still mischief sparkling in its eyes. “Bwir.”

“I mean it. I’m going to shower. You do whatever you want, just… don’t lick it.”

  
  
  
  


In hindsight he should’ve known he’d come back to his helmet whizzing around upside-down with a tiny, big-eared, green-skinned pilot and a few traces of drool on the beskar.

  
  
  
  


XXXXX

  
  
  
  


Din leaves Choria-D9 with a very satisfying stack of wupiupi, the pouch actually weighing down his belt on one side, and in a good enough mood that he decides to make a stop at Zoth Station to refuel and pick up some fresh food so that the child doesn’t have to keep eating the rehydrated rations Din is so used to. And maybe a toy. Or two. Because he can’t let it keep his spare screws and the knobs from the cockpit.

He takes the child in a cloth carrier he (crudely) sewed together, just strong tarp lined with old blankets, little more than a bag slung in front of his chest, the child’s ears barely peeking out at the side. It looks up at him, sucking on the Mythosaur necklace and looks incredibly content for one that’s currently being carried through what Din can only assume must be the earsplitting cacophony of a free market. The helmet automatically reduces noiselevels to keep him comfortable. Maybe he should get the child its own helmet.

He looks down at it and just has to grin. Those huge ears in a helmet? Either they’d have to be completely folded back, which can’t be comfortable, or - or - it wouldn’t be the first time the standard Mandalorian armour would have to be somewhat redesigned for a member of a particular species, but a helmet accommodating such huge ears?

Din shocks himself with the soft huff of laughter that escapes him.

“Bwir!” A tiny hand grasps for his helmet, managing to brush past the lower rim of the helmet.

“Not in public.”

The hand drops and he gets a smile instead.

  
  
  
  
  


They stop by a toy shop first. Din figures a new toy will keep the child quiet and occupied for the rest of their shopping trip. He’s expecting a few wood-carved toys, some plastic ones that’ll splinter after a week, and maybe a few articles of clothing, or blankets, or similar. So to say that he’s wholly underprepared for the colourful glitter and bling of the toy shop, the sheer mass of shelves, the tubs with brightly coloured soft toys, blinking walking robots for the older children. Clothes on the second level a sign reads and Din groans to himself.

The door sweeps open and gives a happy jingle, announcing him to the completely empty shop. His stealth training winces, but the child gurgles happily and squirms.

“Alright. We’re getting one toy. Only one. Choose wisely.”

The left wall has a selection of baby carriers, easily catching his eyes. He swallows and reminds himself to stay firm. Who knows how long this money will have to last them.

Din takes the child out of the carrier and settles it on his arm so it can look around. “How about a soft toy?” He stops in front of a shelf that has a selection of overly soft-looking plushies. The child stretches out for the nearest one and Din reluctantly lets it stand on the shelf. He’s well aware that he’s sticking out like - not even like a sore thumb. He’s sticking out like a beskar armour-wearing Mandalorian in a toy shop. Beskar that could do with a good polishing.

The child putters around happily, eventually climbing down the shelf with more ease than most adults would show to look at more stuffed animals.

Din leaves it to it, pretending to look around as well and behaving normally. Nothing to see here, just a… just a Mandalorian in a toy shop. Yeah.

He stares at the wall of carriers, discomfort prickling at his neck, all senses sharp in case something happens.

The carriers are very colourful. And not even that pricey.

“Can I help you?” It’s a child’s voice, so after Din jumped and whirled around and grasped for his blaster, he gets an opportunity to feel stupid.

The girl is a young twi’lek with brown skin and a sparkling pink headdress, and most notably she’s addressing the child. “I have the same loth cat,” she tells the child. “It’s really cuddly and you can sleep on it, too! And you can style the mane - see, like this.”

Din carefully steps around the shelves, boots barely making a sound. There is the girl, and there is the child, and there is a life-sized loth cat soft toy. Oh, maker.

“And, see, the teeth look really good as well but they’re not actually sharp -”

“We’re not getting that one,” Din interrupts.

The girl flinches and gives him a wide-eyed look. “Oh, I’m sorry, mister! It’s just - your kid seemed so interested -”

“Bwir.” The child tugs at Din’s trousers. It looks affronted. “We-eh!”

“No.”

“Eh!”

He can already see the huge soft toy sitting in the  _ Crest _ , its tail dangling into a pool of blood from a not-so-lucky bounty. And worse, he can feel his resolve crumbling.

“Eeeh! Weh!”

“No.” He has to put his foot down. Even if the child will start wailing and making a scene now, there have to be limits somewhere.

To his surprise, the child doesn’t wail. It just looks… oh, stars, it looks heartbroken. Now Din just feels bad. Feels worse when a lone tear rolls down the child’s cheek and gets soaked up by the brown robe.

He can see an older twi’lek moving closer in his periphery, likely the storeowner and even more likely another pair of curious eyes.

“Sir, can I help you?”

Din closes his eyes and wonders how to get out of this situation.

And then the child gives a tiny, sad sniffle into the silence between the lot of them, and that’s it.

“We’re taking the - the giant loth cat.”

“Bwir!! Bwir!” Tiny arms hug his calf, a tiny body bounces up and down and Din decides that maybe he doesn’t need his dignity as long as the child is happy.

“Of course!” The twi’lek woman beams at him. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  
  
  
  


Embarrassment burning high on his cheeks but thankfully invisible, Din leaves the store a while later with a new carrying cloth, a set of building blocks, four different pacifiers, a baggie full of clothing and towels, special baby soap and that giant loth cat. The child is very happy with itself, of course.

He decides to tough it out and do the rest of his purchases with a loth cat soft toy under his arm, spending a decent chunk of money on frozen food that will taste infinitely better than rehydrated rations, a sweetroll for the child because it begged him, ammo, sewing supplies, medical supplies, soap and finally a cheap shooting sim to occupy himself during the next longer haul.

When they finally make it back to the  _ Crest _ the child immediately demands for the loth cat to be sat into Din’s little sleeping corner, then demands to wear one of the new onesies, and then Din is allowed to head back out again and buy takeout for dinner.

He’s fully aware that he had the spine of a slug today. He can scarcely remember the last time he purchased something that was so much for his comfort and enjoyment as the loth cat (and the toys and the cloths and the pacifiers) are for the child’s enjoyment. And he did spend too much money on those items and the child will either outgrow them or grow bored or they’ll get destroyed with the life they’re living so it’s not a particularly sensible decision. Who knows how soon he’ll run out of money, badly, because he spent it on trivial items?

And yet. The look of wonder and the little trills of happiness the child is making, even now, completely focussed on folding the loth cat’s ears back, then squeaking when they pop back up. How cute it looks in its onesie.

Din presses his beaming smile far down into his chest and closes the  _ Crest _ ’s landing ramp.

“I brought dinner,” he says, holding up the styro box. “You’re not hungry?”

All he gets is another giggle and another flapping sound of synthetic fur.

He sets dinner down on the makeshift table and strips out of his armour, helmet included, before climbing up to the cockpit and setting them on their next course.

When he comes down, the loth cat has become a Mandalorian in the middle of the cargo space.

The helmet doesn’t fit, of course. Still, it makes Din stop short in his tracks. The beskar sits lopsided on the toy’s head, one ear folded underneath its rim, the whole thing just one tiny wiggle away from falling apart. The child is chewing on the loth cat’s tail, looking incredibly pleased with itself.

“Yerb,” it informs Din.

He nods seriously. “It’s good that we’re expanding the tribe. Dinner?”

  
  
  
  


XXXXX

  
  
  
  


The shooting sim Din had picked up turns out to interact so badly with his helmet’s tech that he gives up and meditates instead, leaving the helmet off for once.

When he comes to, there are muffled squawks of excitement and on the copilot’s chair his helmet is wobbling dangerously, a piece of lilac fabric poking out.

He reaches over to pick the helmet up. “You winning?” The child squeaks in protest, little hands grasping for the helmet to come back down. “Alright. Good luck with that.”

  
  
  
  


XXXXX

  
  
  
  


His next bounty is an Abednedo female hiding out on an uninhabited planet that’s mostly ocean. She has the incredible misfortune that Din quite literally crushes her ship - the shielding on her fourty-year-old X-Wing is so good that his scanners don’t pick the ship up at all and the  _ Crest _ ’s landing struts crumple the S-foils like wrapping paper. After that, capturing her is easy. In under ten minutes she’s nicely frozen in carbonite and filling the last free spot in the Cargo bay. And, just because Din is a little bit of an ass sometimes, he strips her ship for valuables. That compressor core might be far out of date, but the plasma coils will still go for a nice price. After all, Din now has two mouths to feed.

While he worked he’d let the kid roam around. As long as he checks every five minutes, it stays within his sight (and maybe he should get a leash for it or something, because he’s really kriffing sure it knows damn well what he’s saying and just chooses to disregard it), happily puttering around and sticking stones into its mouth. Good. That’ll expose it to pathogens and strengthen its immune system.

After he’s done working, he takes the child on a walk around the island to stretch his legs a little and enjoy the fresh air. The child frequently demands stops to sniff a flower, which will then be wiggled underneath his helmet until he sneezes.

And then they find the hot springs. Water so blue that it looks artificial, steam rising in lazy whorls and a faint tang of sulphur.

“Those look pretty nice, huh?” He asks the child, gently stroking over its ear.

“Waaah! Yu!” It’s squirming in his arms in the universal gesture of ‘let me down  _ now _ ’.

“Yeah, I agree. Let’s go for a dip.”

As it turns out, the child is far more interested in the little steam vents, poking its head over the vent and then squeaking when another puft of steam blows its ears back. It makes Din chuckle; another thing he hasn’t done for a very long time.

When he’s fully naked and about to step into the spring, the child waddles over again. It pokes at his beskar, cooing gently to itself. It’s interacting with its own reflection, he realises.

“That’s you.”

The child looks at him, ears raised. “Bwir?”

“No, you.  _ Ad’ika _ .”

“Dwika.”

“ _ Ad’ika _ . My child.”

The child pats its reflection. “Dwika.”

Din settles into the hot spring with a little groan. Warm water is very nice when you’re used to sonics and short, cold showers. He keeps one ear out for any sounds of someone possibly approaching and another ear for whatever mischief the child might get up to, but the rest of his body relaxes into the hot water. It’s really very, very nice. There should be a hot spring on the  _ Crest _ .

Splosh!

Din blinks his eyes open just in time to see the child in the pool with him, sinking like a stone.

He snatches it without thinking. Yanks it above the surface. Before he can panic more, the child coughs and yabbers affrontedly.

“Hey! Be a little more careful.” The child’s ears fall, water dripping off them. “I know the water’s nice, but you can’t swim, and -”

He has a terrible, terrible idea.

He’s also a genius.

“Sit there,” he tells it, setting it down on the grass again. “And don’t move. I have an idea.”

First, he scoops his helmet full of water. Then he steadies it upside down with the rest of his armour. Then he undresses the child. And then he sits it into the helmet. It can stand up in there, head well over the waterline, and those ears will probably keep it from accidentally submerging itself.

Immediately the child starts slapping the water, sending up splashes and shrieking in unbridled excitement.

“Glad you like it.” He carefully wraps a steadying hand around the helmet and closes his eyes again. A few drops of warm water hit that hand. “ _ Ad’ika _ .”

  
  
  
  


XXXXX

  
  
  
  


Just like indicated on the map, the pharmacy is directly next to the glowing neon signs that point to the medcenter. It’s spacious and bright, his visor immediately dimming so his eyes don’t get overwhelmed. There’s a bit of a queue, but he expected that. The mother with her two small children at the end of the queue eyes him nervously when he steps behind them. Din only barely suppresses an eyeroll to himself. Why does nobody seem to understand that Mandalorians always stick to the code, and that code includes not causing trouble for no reason?

The queue is slow to move forward, and all the people waiting eventually catch sight of him and startle. He simply hooks his thumbs into his belt, sighs to himself and looks around. Of course it’s rare for him to step into a properly respectable shop in the properly respectable part of a port, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to behave.

The mother with her daughters is quick, constantly shooting nervous glances over her shoulder, and she grabs her prescription and makes her daughters take a far berth upon leaving just to evade him.

“What can I help you with, sir?” The attendant gives his best attempt at a not-terrified smile. It fails.

“Sustanon 250. Twenty ampoules, with syringes and 21 gauge needles.”

“R-right away, sir. Ma’am. Uh -” The attendant swallows nervously, eyes darting around before he retreats into the storage in the back and Din swallows down another annoyed sigh.

  
  
  
  


He gets his Sustanon in a little baggie together with a package of tissues and breath mints. He also gets a frankly impressive number of stares on his way back to the docks.

“I’m back,  _ ad’ika _ ,” he calls as he comes up the ramp. “Picked up everything we need.”

The levitating building blocks clatter to the ground and his right boot gets a hug. “Bwir!”

“Almost ready to go now.” He hits the button to close the hatch. “Just need to do one more thing, okay?”

The child chirps and clambers onto the storage crate they usually use as a table. As soon as Din sets down his bag, curious fingers are crinkling the material and extracting - oh, just the tissues. That’s fine, then. He’ll have to keep the needles and the syringes and of course the medicine itself somewhere very inaccessible, but he’s gotten good at that. There are a few compartments the child absolutely cannot get into.

He wrestles with his belt and the bodysuit underneath and the undergarments under that and finally his actual underwear. This is always the most difficult part, but he’d like to get the injection underway and then fly off, and undressing completely takes far too much time. When he finally has a big enough patch of skin on the top of his thigh bared and his layers of trousers shoved down far enough that they’ll stay aside for a while, sweat has begun beading on his upper lip. He disinfects the skin, then makes quick work of drawing up the syringe.

The child watches him with huge eyes, ears temporarily quivering when he injects himself.

“Don’t worry,” he tells it. “It doesn’t hurt at all anymore. Promise.”

He disposes of the syringe and tugs his clothes back to how they’re supposed to sit. Then he picks up the child. It immediately stretches to hug his helmet.

“Bwir.”

“We’re ready. Let’s go flying, huh?”

**Author's Note:**

> din is trans bc he's cool. the venn diagram of "characters who are cool" and "characters who are trans" is almost a circle and therefore he is trans :3


End file.
